A locked iPhone belonging to San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook (not pictured) is at the center of the dispute between the Justice Department and Apple.AP

Apple’s tiff with the FBI has stoked a frenzied interest in encryption, execs on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley say — specifically, in encrypting the heck out of their own text messages.

Confide — a New York-based mobile app that goes to almost comical lengths to conceal its users’ communications — said it has lately seen sharp gains in traffic and downloads as Apple CEO Tim Cook dukes it out with FBI Director James Comey.

“Call me paranoid, but I’ve found myself using [Confide] a lot more since this whole thing blew up,” one San Francisco-based venture capitalist told On the Money. “And obviously, I’m not doing it by myself.”

The app has won fame in tech circles for revealing the contents of messages only one line at a time, hiding the rest with a wall of animated orange bricks.

Not only does that help thwart screenshots by would-be sharers, but the app also locks out a message’s recipient and alerts the sender if a screenshot is attempted. Once the message is read, the orange bricks explode as it self-destructs.

“We have seen a spike in our metrics, both in terms of user growth and engagement,” said Jon Brod, Confide’s co-founder and president.

That’s because Confide’s protections are even more radical than those of rivals like Wickr and Telegram.

“It’s impossible to hack and discover something that no longer exists,” Brod says.

Last week, Confide raised $1.6 million from existing seed investors including WGI Group, FirstRound Capital, SV Angel and CrunchFund, bringing the total to $3.6 million.